We Cannot Let This Winona Ryder Renaissance Go to Waste

One of the many delights of Netflix‘s Stranger Things series has been the return to our lives of Winona Ryder. Once the avatar of ’90s girl-next-door-hood, Ryder had practically become a ghost during the 2000s, popping up infrequently and in the oddest places: the love interest in Mr. Deeds; sci-fi disaster S1m0ne; Richard Linklater’s underseen A Scanner Darkly. Now, after resurfacing in two buzzy TV series in as many years, it seems like we might have a genuine Winona Ryder comeback on our hands. Which is why it’s so important we* don’t let it go to waste.

*By “we,” I mean “society.” We all have a part to play in supporting the Winonaissance.

This latest Ryder comeback began last summer when she showed up in a supporting role in HBO‘s Show Me a Hero. Playing a city legislator alongside Oscar Isaac, Ryder was a live wire of a local-politics lifer, alternately weary and pissed off. When she resurfaces near the end of the mini-series only to get scorned, her sense of betrayal at getting burned by a friend felt like it could have been Ryder’s reaction to Hollywood itself. Now, with Stranger Things, she plays a mother (not the first time she’s ever played a mom — she was Spock’s mom, after all — but still a rare role for her) searching for her lost son among some deeply weird and scary supernatural happenings. She’s not only great in the role, but she acts as a kind of human throwback, adding to Stranger Things‘ general nostalgic vibe. More than almost any other actor who was big in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Winona Ryder feels fully OF that era. In many ways, she never made it out. Until now, if she can turn this nostalgia run into something permanent.

Here are five ways the Winona Ryder Renaissance could keep going — besides a second season of Stranger Things, which will surely be highly anticipated.

A Showtime Series

This may be an idea that would have been best advanced five years ago, but time was that Showtime was an excellent place for an underutilized actress to find good, challenging work in a leading role. From Mary-Louise Parker on Weeds to Toni Collette on The United States of Tara to Edie Falco on Nurse Jackie, Showtime was all about making a space for actresses. Ryder hasn’t had a showcase like that for a very, very long time.

Put a Bookend on Girls

This is another option that would give Ryder a chance to not only exercise her acting ability but also to trade on what she represents as a cultural figure. Lena Dunham’s Girls stakes a claim to defining 21st century twentysomething young womanhood, if only to a very specific socioeconomic class of people, in the same way that Winona Ryder came to represent Gen X young women via Reality Bites. Wouldn’t it be perfect, then, for Winona to star on the final season of Girls, perhaps as a wise figure of authority? Seriously: cast her as an editor who has to ask Hannah to define “irony” for her.

Join the ‘American Crime Story’ Collective

If FX’s anthology series wants to keep capitalizing on crimes that were sensations in the ’90s, what better fit to evoke that time and place than Winona Ryder? Show Me a Hero proved that she could play a credible resident of Yonkers. How much more of a stretch, then, would it be to have her play Long Island’s own Mary Jo Buttafuoco?

Winona Is the New Black

This feels like a layup, but certainly one could find room among Litchfield’s many inmates for Winona to show up for a season or two. Surely Orange Is the New Black would be an outlet that would allow Ryder to poke fun at herself for the shoplifting incident/Free Winona era. Jenji Kohan’s series sometimes struggles to find interesting things for all its inmates to do from season to season, but guest stars like Lorraine Toussaint (Vee), Lori Petty (Lolly), and Blair Brown (Judy King) have really been able to flourish.

Reunite with an Old Filmmaker

Here’s the most exciting of options. The streaming revolution has provided platforms for visionary filmmakers to explore the space and freedom that streaming provides, be it the Wachowskis on Sense8 or Baz Luhrmann in the upcoming The Get Down. Winona Ryder has worked with some fantastic directors over the years; if one of them wanted to develop something for TV with a role for her, it could be incredible. Maybe this is how she reunites with the Tim Burton universe? Maybe her Age of Innocence director Martin Scorsese? A Scanner Darkly didn’t amount to much, but Ryder re-teaming with Richard Linklater would be a blast.

But my favorite option of all these is Darren Aronofsky. Aronofsky is exactly the kind of big-ideas director who could dream up something truly fantastic for streaming. The bonus is that Aronofsky directed Ryder to the best performance she’s given in the last 15 years (at least) in Black Swan. I could have watched a dozen more scenes of her embittered former ballerina sneering at Natalie Portman and sipping wine. Get her and Aronofsky on the same project and watch the sparks fly, I say.